The Director produces the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a top-secret and highly classified document fusing intelligence from the various collection agencies, given each morning to the President of the United States.[1] The PDB is seen by the President and to those approved by the President.

Under 50 U.S.C.§ 403-3a, "under ordinary circumstances, it is desirable" that either the Director or the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence be an active-duty commissioned officer in the armed forces or have training or experience in military intelligence activities and requirements. Only one of the two positions can be held by a military officer at any given time. The statute does not specify what rank the commissioned officer will hold during his or her tenure in either position.

Coats being sworn in as Director of National Intelligence by Vice President Mike Pence on March 16, 2017.

The DNI is appointed by the President and is subject to confirmation by the Senate, and serves at the pleasure of the President. The current DNI is Dan Coats, who was nominated for the office on January 5, 2017, by then-President-elect Donald Trump.[4] The DNI and Principal Deputy Directors of National Intelligence both resigned with effect on January 20, Trump’s Inauguration Day. Pending Coats' confirmation, Mike Dempsey was acting DNI from January 20, and became a member of President Trump’s Cabinet on February 8,[5][6] the first time that the DNI was a Cabinet-level position. The United States Senate Intelligence Committee held Coats‘ confirmation hearing on February 28, [7] which approved Coats on March 9, by a 13–2 vote.[8] The Senate confirmed his nomination with an 85–12 vote on March 15, and he was sworn into office the next day.[9]

The 9/11 Commission recommended establishing the DNI position in its 9/11 Commission Report, not released until July 22, 2004, as it had identified major intelligence failures that called into question how well the intelligence community was able to protect U.S. interests against foreign terrorist attacks.

Donald M. Kerr was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence on October 4, 2007, and sworn in on October 9, 2007. Kerr, from Virginia, was most recently the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and previously the Duty Director for Science and Technology at the US CIA and earlier in his career the Assistant Director of the Justice Department's FBI.

Declan McCullagh at News.com wrote on August 24, 2007, that the DNI site was configured to repel all search engines to index any page at DNI.gov. This effectively made the DNI website invisible to all search engines and in turn, any search queries.[12] Ross Feinstein, Spokesman for the DNI, said that the cloaking was removed as of September 3, 2007. "We're not even sure how (the robots.txt file]) got there" – but it was again somehow hidden the next day. Another blog entry by McCullagh on September 7, states that the DNI site should now be open to search engines.[13] This explanation is plausible because some software used for web development has been known to cause servers to automatically generate and re-generate robots.txt, and this behavior can be difficult to turn off. Therefore, if the web developers working for the DNI had tried to solve the issue by simply removing robots.txt, it would have looked like it worked at first, but then fail once the server had undergone a self-check for the robots.txt file.[14] robots.txt has been configured to allow access to all directories for any agent.

In September 2007, the Office of the DNI released "Intelligence Community 100 Day & 500 Day Plans for Integration & Collaboration". These plans include a series of initiatives designed to build the foundation for increased cooperation and reform of the U.S. Intelligence Community.[15]

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as an independent agency to assist the DNI. The ODNI's goal is to effectively integrate foreign, military and domestic intelligence in defense of the homeland and of United States interests abroad.[17] The budget for the ODNI and the Intelligence Community for fiscal year 2013 was $52.6 billion[18] and the base request for fiscal year 2014 was $48.2 billion.[19] The Military Intelligence Program (MIP) base budget request for fiscal year 2014, excluding overseas contingency funds, is $14.6 billion, which together with the NIP, comprise an Intelligence Community budget request of $62.8 billion for fiscal year 2014.[20] The ODNI has about 1,750 employees.[21]

On March 23, 2007, DNI Mike McConnell announced organizational changes, which include:

Elevating acquisition to a new Deputy DNI position

Creating a new Deputy DNI for Policy, Plans, and Requirements (replacing the Deputy DNI for Requirements position)

Establishing an Executive Committee

Designating the Chief of Staff position as the new Director of the Intelligence Staff

The ODNI continued to evolve under succeeding directors, culminating in a new organization focused on intelligence integration across the community. The ODNI has six centers and 15 Offices that, together with the centers, support the Director of National Intelligence as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC) in overseeing and directing implementation of the NIP and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security. The six ODNI centers include:

The ODNI is divided into core, enabling, and oversight offices. The Principal Deputy Director (PDDNI) to the DNI, in a role similar to that of a Chief Operating Officer, oversees operation of ODNI offices, manages Intelligence Community (IC) coordination and information sharing, reinforces the DNI's intelligence-integration initiatives, and focuses on IC resource challenges.

The core mission functions of the ODNI are organized under the Deputy DNI for Intelligence Integration (DDNI/II). The DDNI/II facilitates information sharing and collaboration through the integration of analysis and collection, and leads the execution of core mission functions. These include: